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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072361">Spooktober Story Collection</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue'>theskywasblue</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Horror, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Monsters, Shorts, Vampires, Werewolves, Zombies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 22:35:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,678</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072361</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of horror shorts to celebrate the Halloween season, and my own love of all things horror.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Vengeance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>by fervent request of kansouame, a collection of horror shorts written in October 2020, assembled all in one place.  These were all prompted using a random number generator, and a list of ideas I collected by browsing my horror movie collection. Written one per day throughout October, with a minimum goal of 100 words.   This is basically nothing but a big writing exercise, wearing a cheap Halloween mask.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It seems to take forever for him to fall asleep, but at last he does, whistling softly through his twice-broken nose. She watches his chest rise and fall, realizing that she doesn’t feel angry anymore; only resolved. Her skin aches everywhere his hands have been.<br/><br/>At some point, she really believed it would be different here, that they might go back to the way they had been, that summer, when they were so in love.<br/><br/>Moonlight slips through the frost-shrouded windows. She climbs out of bed and puts on her coat.<br/><br/>There’s a long path from the cabin’s back door, out into the woods. The lake laps against the nearby shore. It’s barely midnight; in the summer, the night would still be alive with laughter, the air would smell of campfire and gasoline spilled from boat motors. But all the neighbours cabins are closed up for the season; the night is empty, and the leaves underfoot barely seem to make a sound.<br/><br/>If pressed, she couldn’t find the place on a map. She thinks she couldn’t find it in daylight, even at gunpoint. But in the dark she knows just where to step off the path, where to plunge into the undergrowth. Branches snag her nightgown, her hair - but they aren’t unkind. They’re guiding her, pulling her forward instead of holding her back<br/><br/>It waits for her in the clearing: this hulking twist of gnarled limbs and great, glowing eyes, head crowned in dry, golden leaves and late-season berries so ripe they drip crimson juices down its featureless face. The air reeks of rotted mushrooms and oil-thickened fur, hot and alive, enough to turn her stomach. She can feel it’s heavy, damp breath and hear the creak of its bones as it moves.<br/><br/>It takes a moment for her to find her voice. “I - I’m here,” she says. “I want what you promised before. Please.”<br/><br/>Tears burn on the cold skin of her cheeks. The trees stir, whispering in a hundred thousand dissonant voices - angry, sorrowful, scared, elated. She wipes her face with both her hands.<br/><br/>“Please. I’m ready now.”<br/><br/>She reaches for it, with trembling hands, and - at last - it reaches back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Hunger</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“He’s not going to hurt you.”<br/><br/>Adam held his breath, watching his little brother edge across the concrete floor. The thing in the corner didn’t move, but it was watching - close and intense, its breath coming in a heavy, rasping pant.<br/><br/>“Mikey, don’t.”<br/><br/>“It’s okay.” Mikey edged closer, dragging his feet across the floor. “He remembers me.”<br/><br/>The thing in the corner shifted, closing the distance by inches. The dusty light from the overhead bulb touched its slick, dirty face, and - god - it looked just like a little boy. Like a face from a poster or a milk carton.<br/><br/>“You remember me, right?” Mikey could have reached out to touch him, now - the putrid skin stretched taught across its bony shoulders, its mud-slicked hair. “Here - I brought you something.”<br/><br/>Mikey reached into his bag, and pulled out the meat. Blood leaked through the plastic wrap, dribbled down his arm. The creature watched it with its bright eyes, pulled cracked and torn lips back from its broken teeth in a hideous smile as Mikey unwrapped the roast and set it on the floor. It snatched the meat up so quickly, Mikey barely had a chance to move his hand.<br/><br/>The sound of it eating - sticky tearing, smacking growls - made Adam want to puke.<br/><br/>“See - he’s not dangerous. He’s just hungry.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Decay</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There is something dead, somewhere in the house.</p><p>There’s no other explanation for the smell. They’ve scrubbed every wall and floor, moved all the old furniture that came with the place - even the pieces they intended to keep - out onto the lawn and scrubbed it down; they’ve flushed the pipes and disassembled the garbage disposal, but the smell won’t go away.</p><p>“Maybe it’s in the walls,” Dan says. “A dead cat, or…”</p><p>“God,” Casey says, pouring murky water from the wash bucket down the kitchen drain. “Please don’t say that.”</p><p>He shrugs, picking a blister on his palm. “I mean, what else could it be?”</p><p>“Please - that’s so…” she shudders, and he laughs, pulling her away from the sink and into his arms by the loops on her jeans.</p><p>“You’re so sensitive.”</p><p>“It’s horrible!” She slaps at him, but only playfully. “A poor little cat!”</p><p>He grins, all teeth and easy charm. There’s dirt on his face and she tries to wipe it away with her thumb, but it only smears more. “Gotta toughen you up if you’re gonna live the country life, you know. Things die.”</p><p>She lets him pull her in, rests her cheek against his chest, and the smell is there - suffocating, like it’s rubbed right into his skin.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Nightmare</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Eat your dinner,” Mark said, coldly.<br/>
<br/>
Nate glanced at the bloody mess on his plate, and swallowed the sensation of bile rising up in his throat. “I’m not - not hungry.”<br/>
<br/>
Mark smiled, dark, vicious, his mouth full of too many teeth, split all the way back to his ears. “Too good for it, is that what you think?”<br/>
<br/>
Nate shook his head. The walls of the kitchen seemed to flex, pulling in and out, like a great chest expanding. He pressed his hands over his eyes, breathed in raggedly. The air tasted like iron and fever sweat.<br/>
<br/>
“This is how it’s gonna be,” Mark said, picking at his bloodied plate with gore-wet hands. The skin across his back and shoulders pulsed with the infection underneath, ripe with blisters. One split apart as Nate watched, leaking yellow pus down the length of his arm as something dark and jagged emerged from the skin. “You’re gonna clean your fucking plate, and then we’re gonna have a discussion, like proper fucking men.”<br/>
<br/>
He stared at Nate, unblinking. His eyes were worse than bloodshot, the whites gone bright, raw red, like every vessel in them had burst.<br/>
<br/>
“Eat it.”<br/>
<br/>
Nate picked up his fork, put it down again. “I’m dreaming.”<br/>
<br/>
It was the pills, the pot, the - something. Anything but reality. This couldn't happen, it <em>didn’t</em> happen.<br/>
<br/>
Mark pointed, at his plate, emphatic, “Fucking eat it, you little fuck.”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m <em>dreaming</em>,” he said again, louder, bordering on desperate. Nate tried to push his chair back, but his feet slipped on the blood-slicked linoleum, and Mark’s hand shot out, catching him by the wrist, pulling him forward with such force that Nate was winded by the edge of the table driving into his ribs.<br/>
<br/>
“You’ll fucking eat it.” Mark grabbed a heavy, slick handful of the meat from Nate’s plate, crushing it in his blistered palm. Nate gagged, watching the blood run down Mark’s wrist, saturating the leather band of his watch, droplets catching on his dark arm hair. He pushed his hand towards Nate’s face as Nate braced against the table and tried to push away, but Mark’s grip on his wrist was like iron - bone grating against bone.<br/>
<br/>
“Mom made this for you,” Mark snarled, bloody drool coursing past his twisted, needle teeth, spattering Nate’s face. “And you <em>will fucking eat</em>.”<br/>
<br/>
Nate screamed, and woke with the taste of blood in his mouth.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Monster</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The fort’s mess hall was on fire.</p><p>Fire licked the blackened sky, and smoke poured from the narrow windows. Men ran past in droves, hauling buckets of icy water that sloshed across the trampled snow. August staggered after them in mindless shock, boots unlaced, rifle gripped in one hand, half-dazed with sleep. He stumbled over his laces and almost sprawled into the snow.</p><p>“Out of the way!” Someone barked, elbowing him from behind. August barely caught himself, only to almost trample over a little girl in a nightgown, standing barefoot in the snow.</p><p>“Maman!” She wailed, as August scooped her up, pounding futilely at his chest with her fists. More shapes darted by in the flickering dark, but none of them seemed concerned with the girl’s cries.</p><p>“Alright, it’s alright,” August struggled with her squirming weight, staggering towards the open door he hoped she had emerged from. “We’ll find your maman, I promise.”</p><p>He set her on the floor, and she keened like a wild animal, scrambling under a nearby table. Outside, August could still hear the commotion of the fire, and now the clang of some alarm bell, drawing even more attention.</p><p>August cast his around the room, looking for a lamp, for any source of light, stumbling through the dark. A sense of wrongness came over him a little at a time The kitchen chairs were overturned; a single boot lay in the middle of the floor; and there, as his eyes adjusted to the shadows, on the wall near the door - a long rake of claws, gouged into the wood.</p><p>At the back of the house, something moved.</p><p>From beneath the table, the girl made a small sound, like a frightened dog. August brought the rifle up, feeling the barrel slip in his chilled fingers. His heart kicked up a beat so loud that he could barely hear his own voice. “Who’s there?”</p><p>Something thudded against the floor - once, twice - accompanied by a sound like a branch cracking. August could just make out a shadow, moving beyond the door frame. August’s hands trembled as he pulled the hammer on the rifle back.</p><p>What emerged from the back room was not a man, though it was as tall as one - or taller - a hulking shape of hunched shoulders and powerful arms ending in clawed hands, every inch of exposed flesh bristling with thick black fur. But it was the head that was most horrific; not the head of a man at all, but a beast, wolf-like, with an elongated muzzle that shone slick with night-black blood, full of enormous, bone-white teeth. It moved half on two legs, half on four, a slow and predatory, turning pale, pitiless yellow eyes on August, snarling.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Sacrifice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is based on an actual spooky spot that exists in the actual field behind the actual rink, next to the actual high school I attended.</p><p>I never made any blood sacrifices there, though. Not sure about anyone else.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There are always places you can go, if you find yourself in need of a favour.<br/><br/>For example, in the field out behind the ice rink, near where they dumb the ice shavings from the Zamboni, where the grass doesn’t grow - a perfect circle of perpetually dry, cracked earth, sometimes scattered with the trash that blows over from the high school next door: candy bar wrappers, cigarette butts, an the ruins of pages torn from myriad notebooks, scrawled with crude poetry and cruder drawings, peppered with the occasional math problem.<br/><br/>But nothing comes without a price.<br/><br/>If you only need a small favour, then a small gift will do. Moths are abundant in the summer; a dozen or so, caught in a jar, crushed into powder. Black flies are best in the fall, when they’re fat and drowsy, easy to catch and crush in your hand.<br/><br/>But a bigger favour needs something bigger, something with blood that can drip down through the cracks in the earth, and onto the upturned faces of the things waiting underneath.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Cursed</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It’s just a game,” Heather grabbed her by the sleeve of her coat, pulling her towards the bridge. “There’s no such thing as a witch’s curse.”<br/><br/>Moira dug in her heels, feeling the skin prickle on the back of her neck. “But there <em>was</em> a witch.”<br/><br/>They had talked about it in history class, and again in the lunchroom. Eugenia Holdfast, tried for witchcraft, drowned in the river, next to the bridge.<br/><br/>“You’re so fucking stupid,” Heather groaned, fingers slipping from her sister’s coat she stepped around Moira, towards the bridge. “This is why you don’t have any friends.”<br/><br/>It stung, even though it was true. Moira <em>didn’t</em> have friends, not like Heather did. Heather was smarter, funnier, prettier - even though they had the same hair, the same eyes, the same nose; so perfectly identical they could even make their own parents do a double-take - but Heather was more of everything.<br/><br/>“It’s just a stupid bridge.” Heather marched forward, fearless, and Moira trailed behind her, helpless. The sound of Heather’s shoes on the dry wood planks was deafening. Moira’s toes touched the first plank and a chill ran down her spine. Heather marched to the bridge’s center, cloaked in the shadows of the surrounding trees. The lamp at the far end of the bridge flickered.<br/><br/>“Take the picture!” she called back, spinning on her heel.<br/><br/>“Heather -”<br/><br/>“Hurry up!”<br/><br/>Moira raised her phone, centering her sister in the frame. The light flickered again, plunging Heather into shadow just as the shutter clicked. For a moment, the camera froze, leaving only a black screen.<br/><br/>And when she looked up, her sister was gone.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Other World</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The allusions in this one are so obvious they can be seen from outer space.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The train blew past, startling Alex out of doze, making him rock back on his heels, stunned. The light above his head flickered and buzzed, vibrating in the wind. Alex bent to rub his eyes, ignoring the reek of fryer oil on his palms, and when he looked up, there was a little boy in a rabbit mask standing on the other side of the tracks.<br/><br/>He was little - downright scrawny - dressed in a ratty black hoodie and torn jeans; eight, maybe nine years old, way too young to be alone on a train platform after midnight.<br/><br/>“Hey -“ Alex opened his mouth without thinking, his voice escaping in an exhausted rasp. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Hey, kid - are you…”<br/><br/>The kid tipped his head, thoughtful, like a dog hearing a distant sound, and leapt down onto the tracks.<br/><br/>“Hey!” Alex watched the kid scramble, quick as the creature that masked his face, into the dark tunnel. Wind howled across the platform. Suddenly, Alex was wide awake. Without thinking about it, he jumped down onto the tracks and stumbled into the dark.<br/><br/>“Kid, come back!” He could just see the edges of movement in the dark - the ears of the mask cutting back and forth. “Kid!”<br/><br/>He stumbled, heart going too fast. When was the next east-bound train? He had no idea. Wasn’t he supposed to watch out for the third rail? He fumbled into his pocket for his phone, and tripped, sprawling across the tracks and oily gravel.<br/><br/>“Fuck.”<br/><br/>The wind howled down the tunnel, joined by a distant, metallic scream. Alex rolled to one side, blinding himself with the light from his phone, chilled fingers slipping on the screen until the flashlight came on.<br/><br/>A pair of dirty sneakers sat right in front of him.<br/><br/>Alex twisted his head, lifted the light. The kid stared down at him, the grubby mask leering coldly. He stood so perfectly still that Alex couldn’t even see him breathing.<br/><br/>“Kid, are you okay? Don’t you know it’s fucking dangerous down here?” Alex sat up, rubbing his stinging hand on his jeans. “We’ve gotta get out of here - c’mon.”<br/><br/>He stood, turned toward the near end of the tunnel, but the kid didn’t move. When Alex grabbed for his hand, he jumped back.<br/><br/>“<em>Come on</em>.”<br/><br/>In the distance, metal screamed on metal again, but closer this time. Alex felt cold sweat on the back of his neck.<br/><br/>“We gotta <em>go</em>.”<br/><br/>Alex reached for the kid’s arm, caught the edge of his sleeve, just as the kid pulled his arm up, and reached for his mask. He grabbed one of the painted ears, grabbing it by a jagged edge where something had broken away, and pulled it back to the top of his head, flattening sandy curls, and wiped his cheeks and chin on his sleeve. A gust of wind, as hot as a close breath, tore down the tunnel, and the kid looked up at Alex with eyes flat, glossy, black as oil, and smiled.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Stalker</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Four blocks from the club, Trevor seized his palm in cold fingers and said, “That guy is following us.”<br/><br/>“What?” Oscar laughed, glancing back over his shoulder at the guy, still on the other side of the road, stopped by a flashing cross-light. “No. C’mon.”<br/><br/>“He <em>is</em>.” Trevor looked pale in the murky glow of the street lamps. The glo-paint had smeared across his sharp cheekbones, lifeless now without the black light from the club. He looked younger than he did before, with bits of boy glitter in his mouse-brown curls.<br/><br/>Oscar looked back again, and the guy was still there. Not closer, but walking with his head down, hands jammed into his pockets, hood up, with purpose. Oscar’s stomach rolled, and he hesitated, outside the barred window of a Chinese restaurant, in the cold orange light of the closed sign. It occurred to him that he had no idea where they are.<br/><br/>“Don’t stop,” Trevor insisted, pulling his arm, urging him forward.<br/><br/>Oscar’s T-shirt stuck to his back as they stumbled along the broken sidewalk. He was suddenly painfully thirsty, face wet with sweat. The street was deserted, except for the guy, trailing behind; never gaining on them, but never falling back. The street got darker - lamps broken, storefront windows pasted over with old newspapers and faded <em>for lease</em> signs with disconnected phone numbers.<br/><br/>“Wait - wait, where are we…”<br/><br/>The sidewalk pitched downward, approaching an underpass. Oscar dragged his heels against the pavement, heart stuttering with fear; but Trevor was too strong, pulling him into the damp darkness, choking with the smell of spilled fuel and stagnant water. The only light shone hazily at the far end of the tunnel. The strange shadows of obscene graffiti blurred on the concrete walls. Trevor pulled him in behind a large, square support pillar, pressed him to the wall. It was so dark Oscar could barely see the outline of his face.<br/><br/>Then he heard the dull echo of footsteps.<br/><br/>“Trevor -“<br/><br/>“Shh…”<br/><br/>The footsteps drew closer, heavy and confident, but slightly dragging. Oscar could feel his own pulse fluttering in his throat like a trapped bird. Trevor’s cheek pressed against his - damp, but icy cold. He was barely breathing hard.<br/><br/>He was barely breathing at all.<br/><br/>The footsteps drew closer. Oscar squeezed his eyes shut. Closer. Trevor’s breath was damp and sour on the side of his neck. Closer.<br/><br/>Then, they passed right by.<br/><br/>Oscar gulped a mournful of sour air, twisted his head just enough to see the shape pass through the cone of light at the end of the tunnel and disappear.<br/><br/>“Holy shit,” he laughed, breathlessly, squeezing Trevor’s arm. “Holy shit - that fucking scared the shit out of me.”<br/><br/>“Yeah,” Trevor murmured, lips pressed damp and chilly against the pulse point jumping under Oscar’s skin. “I know. You smell fucking great.”<br/><br/>And then his teeth sank into Oscar’s throat.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Beyond</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><br/>The instrument lights blink slowly, tiny blisters of light in the darkness. Their glow barely touches the graffiti on the walls - disparate words written and rewritten, backwards and forwards in ink, blood, and spit; unrecognizable script, long past interpretation. They don’t know the truth - no one ever has.<br/><br/>It’s quiet now. No more comms, no more navigation reports, no more grav-lock. Weightlessness recalls something beyond the edges of memory: slow, drifting blackness.<br/><br/>In the space between the little bursts of light, when the air exchange pauses at the end of its cycle, the darkness recalls the last words spoken, before the primary power failed: Mercer, screaming, “What was it? What did you see?” and Silva’s broken sobbing, “Nothing. Nothing.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Parasite</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“It doesn’t hurt,” Shaun said, “if that’s what you’re worried about.”<br/><br/>Tori swallowed hard, fingers twisting in the ropes. She tried to keep contact with his bi-coloured gaze - one eye familiar brown, the other gone over blood red - but it made her nauseous.<br/><br/>“No Shaun - that’s not what I’m worried about.”<br/><br/>Shaun wrung his hands, manically, laughing. “Remember when we were kids - remember? - and we used to burp the alphabet? Chug the soda til it burned in our noses?”<br/><br/>Tori nodded, weakly. Her fingers tingled from purposely making the ropes bite into her skin, but when she relaxed her grip, they seemed minutely looser. She stared up at her brother without blinking. “Yeah Shaun, I remember.”<br/><br/>“It’s like that. It’s a lot like that.” He pressed his hands to his face, grinding the heels of his palms into sinuses like he was trying to relieve the pressure. “Fuck, it burns - but just for a minute. Then you can see <em>everything</em>.”<br/><br/>He moved his hands, and Tori saw something there, underneath the skin, finger-thick and squirming between skin and skull, slipping down towards the space between his eye and nose. A slow, bright stream of fresh blood started to pour from Shaun’s left nostril, slicking his lips and chin.<br/><br/>“Soon you’ll see it too, Tor. Then you’ll understand.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Back from the Dead</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Owen is nine, the first time he comes back from the dead, with sweet, damp dirt and bright green bits of moss caught in his hair.<br/><br/>No one says a word, or tells him where he’s been. He dreams of drowning every night for weeks, and his mouth tastes like grave dirt for three and a half years.<br/><br/>He is fourteen when he wakes up on the side of the highway with blood caked in his hair, and the smell of gasoline on his clothes. Two days later he sees his own face on a news report about the crash. The next day, he sees the shadow people for the first time, standing behind him in a rest stop mirror.<br/><br/><em>Dead boy,</em> they call out to him with slow, hollow voices. <em>Dead boy, where are you going?</em><br/><br/>They trail after him for a few hours, visible in the corner of his eye. His scalp itches for days. Eighteen months after the accident he pulls a cold crystal of windshield glass out from skin underneath his jaw. The gasoline smell never goes away.<br/><br/>He is seventeen years old when he’s stabbed in the neck, during a fight in a dark alley. He wakes up with someone rifling through his grimy pockets, another reaching for his fallen bag. The kid going for the bag screams, runs away, into the glow of the rising sun at the alley’s narrow end. The one with his hand in Owen’s pocket falls back on his ass, and starts to cry.<br/><br/>The shadow people stand just behind his shoulder, almost close enough to touch Owen’s shoes. Owen pulls the knife from his neck and runs.<br/><br/>He hears them calling behind him, like a choir, <em>Dead boy, dead boy, dead boy,</em> and he doesn’t stop running until he can’t, anymore.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Wild</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>From the same universe as "Monster"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>August expected the ravens to take flight as they reached the clearing, but the dark birds remained, eerily silent, watching the men’s approach with ink-black eyes. There was no sense to the scene before them, except that it reminded August of the cabin: red, everywhere, and ripe with the smell of gore and spilled entrails. Bits of meat and torn skin hung from tree branches, mingled with the pine needles. Flesh was smeared across the rocks. A head - a deer’s head, with a full, sloping crown of antlers - hung from a large net of branches; fat tongue lolling, one eye missing. The rest of the bones lay at the base of the tree, tended by the ravens, who flapped restlessly as Thomas and August drew closer, ready to defend their prize.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Darkness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>From the same universe as "Nightmare"</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The wind howled through the dying grass, battering against the house. Blue fumbled with his phone, but as he reached the bottom of the stairs, the battery died, leaving it useless in his hand.<br/><br/>“Nate! Nate!” The wind deafened him, pushed the words back into his mouth. He charged ahead a few feet, and suddenly he was adrift - he knew the house should be behind him, the barn ahead - but he couldn’t see anything, even his own hands. He prayed for a car to go by on the road, anything for a little light as he stumbled forward, lurching to a stop when something cut sharply across his forehead, stinging and hot. He reached into the darkness in front of him and his palm struck something jagged and slick. The smell struck back at him at the same instant: putrid-sweet rot mixed with an animal musk.<br/><br/>The tree.<br/><br/>Blue pulled his hand back, feverishly wiping his sticky fingers on his jeans. He turned left and hit a branch, turned right and caught his foot on a protruding root, almost losing his balance. A wave of claustrophobia crashed over him, and he had to close his eyes, clench his fists to keep the panic from seizing control. It felt like the jagged edges of low branches were all around him, touching him, jabbing at him, no matter how tightly he pulled in on himself.<br/><br/>Then, the wind paused for an instant, reduced to a slow hush slithering through the grass, and Blue heard someone breathing.<br/><br/>“Nate?”<br/><br/>The sound was too heavy, too wet to be a byproduct of the wind. The grass hadn’t seen rain in weeks. Blue reached for the sound, probing the darkness, and struck the tree again, his fingers sinking into the muck of the rotted bark, into the smouldering heat of rot and ruin.<br/><br/>“Blue!” Nate seized his hand, dragging him backwards, branches raking through Blue’s hair and across his face as he was pulled into the open air. He tripped over panic and his own feet; and Nate caught him, pulling him upright<br/><br/>“Jesus Christ, Nate,” Blue panted, leaning into him, feeling the damp T-shirt stretched across his chest, the heat of his body against the wind. “Where - where the fuck were you?”<br/><br/>Nate produced a flashlight in a sudden burst of painful brightness, forcing Blue to cover his eyes. “I was in the barn.”<br/><br/><em>No you weren’t,</em> Blue thought, traitorously. He couldn’t have been. He’d been right there, standing in the darkness right beside him, Blue was sure of it. But rather than say anything, he crushed Nate’s fingers together in his palm. “Didn’t you hear me shouting?”<br/><br/>Nate shook his head. “No. Sorry.” He pressed his palm to Blue’s stinging forehead, smeared blood into his pale hair. “You’re bleeding. You should stay away from there.”</p>
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<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Haunted</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Right before it happens, the air goes cold - a dozen degrees in a split second, so that their breath clouds suddenly in the air - and Georgia tastes ozone at the back of her mouth, like lightning on the soft palate. Judith stumbles on the stairs, catching herself against Georgia’s back as the lights go out in the lobby, quick and final, like candles caught by a draft.<br/><br/>“Christ,” Judith hisses. Georgia can feel the ghost of her breath on the back of her neck; reaches back and squeezes Judith’s hand as something - a great, dark shape, almost a man, but too tall, limbs pulled like taffy and shoulders hunched - stalks by across the worn oriental rug that dominates the lobby floor, and disappears behind a pillar, without emerging from the other side.<br/><br/>The lights blink back on, and Judith presses her forehead to Georgia’s shoulder, heaving a long sigh. “God. Can we get out of here, please?”</p>
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<a name="section0016"><h2>16. Prisoner</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>A blatant re-use of the premise of Silent Hill 4, with the protagonist reversed, for shits and giggles.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>About three weeks after she moves in, Tegan notices the hole in her bedroom wall. It’s almost small enough to be the sort of hole made by a hook, used to hang a picture - except it’s only about a foot and a half off the carpet.<br/><br/>She considers it for a moment, probes it with the pad of her thumb. There’s nothing outwardly sinister about it, except that it’s so perfect, so <em>there</em> - pointed perfectly towards her bed - and there’s another apartment, right on the other side of that wall.<br/><br/>“Donovan? He’s a bit of a shut in.” Abby says this the way she seems to say everything - with complete nonchalance, and no thought at all for the door, just across the hall. “I think I met him once, back when he moved in, but I haven’t seen him since.”<br/><br/>“When was that?”<br/><br/>She shrugs, “Like...two years? He seemed nice. Not like a pervert, or anything.”<br/><br/>Tegan winces at the word pervert; but there’s no sound, no movement behind the door of 304. Maybe he’s not listening. Maybe he doesn’t care.<br/><br/>“I can come by and take a look at it,” Abby suggests. “But I’m sure it’s nothing. This place is just a shithole.”<br/><br/>Tegan waves her off. “No, I’ll - move my dresser in front of it, maybe.”<br/><br/>But the trouble comes from knowing the hole is there, more than anything.<br/><br/>Still, that night, she shoves her heavy, antique dresser across the worn carpet - completely out of place from where she wanted it, but that’s just how it’s going to have to be - but stops just short of pushing it in front of the hole, needled by an instant’s curiosity.<br/><br/>There’s nothing to see on the other side of the hole. Probably, Tegan thinks, it doesn’t even go all the way through; it’s just a weird little spot, drilled into the drywall, maybe by an accident, or a bored kid with a screwdriver. She rocks back on her heels, relieved -<br/><br/>And then she sees it - a flicker of light.<br/><br/>Heart pounding, she presses her thumb over the hole, blocking the view of whatever - whoever - is on the other side.<br/><br/>“Pervert,” she hisses under her breath; and then, with anger this time, “<em>Pervert</em>. I know you’re there!”<br/><br/>For a moment, there’s only silence; then, a man’s voice, not only muffled by the wall, but echoing, almost as if at the end of a very long tunnel, a the distance between them greater than just a flimsy wall of wood and old drywall: “Please. Can you help me? I can’t get out.”</p>
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<a name="section0017"><h2>17. Imposter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ode to <i>Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i> meets <i>Night of the Living Dead</i></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Claire, wait!”<br/><br/>“It’s okay,” she says, hoping it doesn’t sound like a lie. Julien is shaking. Tiny dots of blood peek through the bandage on his forehead. His eyes look huge behind his glasses. She pulls his toque down to cover the blood. “Just - be brave, okay? They won’t know.”<br/><br/>Claire swallows the anger, the terror. She wants to leave him. Everything will be easier if she doesn’t have to worry about him. He isn’t even really her brother. The thought makes her feel nauseous with guilt. Julien may not be her brother, but at least he’s a real person.<br/><br/>“You have to do this, Julien. We have to do this. I’m not gonna leave you.”<br/><br/>The hallway leading to the bathrooms is deserted. Claire twists the lock before she shuts the door in the handicap bathroom, to hide the mess they left behind. Dull, mechanical Muzak plays over the mall speakers. Julien slips his mittened hand into Claire’s sweat-damp one as they slip out of the hallway leading down to the bathroom and into the mall.<br/><br/>It’s quiet - much quieter than it should be. Two kids stand motionless by the bank of coin-operated rides outside the entrance to the Safeway, staring passively at a painted horse. An old man shuffles past an unlit window display, dragging a pink dog leash with no dog at the other end. A half- dozen teenagers - Claire tries to tell herself not to look too closely in case she recognizes them - walk past in a long line, staring straight ahead. Casey tries to match their stuff-kneed pace as she and Julien walk in the other direction.<br/><br/>“Claire,” Julien pulls on her arm. His voice seems painfully loud in the echo-chamber of the vacant hall.<br/><br/>“Shhh…”<br/><br/>“Claire!”<br/><br/>This time, she looks, and there, motionless in the entryway of the sports memorabilia store, is their neighbour, Mr. Travis. His face is slack, eyes empty. It doesn’t even seem like he’s looking at them, but Claire pulls Julien ahead anyway.<br/><br/>“Let’s <em>go</em>.”<br/><br/>Two women appear in the entryway of a beauty salon, just ahead. One has a tiny pair of trimming scissors, buried in her cheek, black blood drying in a sticky line on her cheek.<br/><br/>“Keep walking,” Claire hisses, when she feels Julien’s heels start to drag on the tile. Up ahead a man lurches stiffly into the wall of the lotto booth, tumbles over and hits the floor with a heavy thud. There are more appearing everywhere, shuffling and stumbling out of stores and from behind displays - forgetting, in their haste, how to move, how to walk like human beings. God, there are so many. And the door to the outside seems very, very far away.</p>
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<a name="section0018"><h2>18. Madness</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sometimes, Luke could hear them screaming. </p><p>Most of the time, it was after dark. Cold nights, stormy nights. He’d turn up the television, or put on the radio before he went to bed - a different kind of ghost-voice, reaching out through the darkness - and in the morning things were usually quiet again. </p><p>He didn’t mind them wandering around during the day, so long as they didn’t get in the way of his keeping the place in order. </p><p>“Doesn’t it get lonely up there?” </p><p>“Lonely?” Luke laughed, carefully tucking his bread into the grocery bag atop the eggs as the girl at the till rang up his cans of vegetables. </p><p>“Well, I mean it must be a little creepy, right? I don’t know why they ever thought people would go there to get healthy.” She paused, laughing as Luke passed her his debit card. “Honestly - if I was up there all alone I’d go insane. I don’t know how you do it.”</p><p>Luke smiled. “Oh - I guess you just get used to it after a while."</p>
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<a name="section0019"><h2>19. Silence</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>“Can’t you just be quiet - can’t you just -”</em><br/><br/>Lara jolts awake just as the baby’s cry dies off. Maybe she was dreaming it, or only just remembering it. The cabin is cold. The heat must be out again. Lara lies still, tucked beneath the blankets, tries to will herself to sleep, but it's too cold. Her toes ache.<br/><br/>She’s glad the caretaker showed her how to manage the pilot light on the heater, after that first night.<br/><br/><em>“Isn’t this kind of dangerous?”</em> She’d asked, thinking about slow gas leaks, and the danger of going to sleep and not waking up. He’d only shrugged.<br/><br/>The baby starts crying again, just as she gets the pilot light going.<br/><br/>The next cabin down the path is just visible through the kitchen window. There are no lights on, no signs of life but the crying. Lara fills the kettle for tea, knowing she won’t sleep again now. Even yesterday, when she’d gone for a walk to escape the sound, she’d heard it miles down the old trail to the lake. With it being the off season, every little footstep, every cough, every thought carries for miles.<br/><br/><em>Can’t you just be quiet?</em><br/><br/>The kettle whistles sharply. When Lara pulls it off the heat, the crying has stopped again.</p>
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<a name="section0020"><h2>20. Visitor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The intercom buzzed just as Cole turned out the lights. He stood for a moment in the middle of the dark living room, staring almost uncomprehendingly at the blinking light on the intercom, until it buzzed again. </p><p>“Yeah, hi?”</p><p>Silence. The sound of the wind. Cole reached for the disconnect button, just as a voice came through. “I - I think I forgot my keys.”</p><p>“Just a minute.”</p><p>From the living room window, Cole could see down to the front door, hand cupped around his face to block the glare. Below, he saw the top of a dark-haired head, spotted with snowflakes. The guy didn’t look like he was wearing a jacket - he had probably been running the trash out. </p><p>“Yeah, alright. Just hang on.”</p><p>He buzzed the guy in, heard the distant sound of the security door creaking open and slamming shut, the thud of footsteps in the stairwell, passing his floor by.</p><p>Cole had just finished brushing his teeth when the intercom buzzed again. </p><p>This time, he ignored it, wiping the toothpaste from his mouth, shuffling to bed. Let someone else deal with it. Bad enough on the weekend, hearing hte drunks come home at three in the morning - but a weeknigt - didn’t any of them have day-jobs?</p><p>But the buzzer kept sounding, again and again. </p><p>On the off chance that maybe the damned thing had gotten stuck, or short-circuited somehow, Cole checked the window before answering. Sure enough, the same guy was standing out in the snow. </p><p>“Dude, are you high or something?” He demanded; but the only answer was the hiss of the wind. He checked the window again, and the guy was gone. </p><p><i>Good,</i> he thought, sharply, feeling exhaustion creeping up on him. <i>Fuck off already.</i></p><p>He took two steps back towards the bedroom, and heard the sound of the security door downstairs slamming shut. The footsteps were heavier than before, on the wide, empty stairwell. This time, he heard the fire door outside his apartment creaking open. </p><p>In the narrow line of light that shone beneath the front door, Cole saw the shadow of a pair of feet. </p><p>Then, someone knocked.</p>
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<a name="section0021"><h2>21. Old Gods</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the harvest, the sky turns blood-red, the air hazy-thick with the smell of burning wheat as they burn off the stubble. They watch the fire’s progress, faces wrapped in dampened cloth, eyes aching from the smoke, and stir the ashes into the earth. </p><p>The moon gets larger every night, pendulous against a sky devoid of stars - first white, then grey; orange, then red. The farmers are sure to flee the fields, to the safety of their darkened houses, as it finally swells and dips, heavy against the warm earth, cloaked in lingering smoke - the perfect birthing bed for the child of a long, empty winter.</p>
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<a name="section0022"><h2>22. Possession</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Just before three in the morning, a guy came in wearing an Ugly Face. </p><p>Elliott watched the guy putter around the store, picking things up and putting them down again like he had never seen them before. Maybe he hadn’t. Elliott didn’t know exactly what The Uglies were - just that they rode around in human skin, with their weird, hazy faces hanging over their human ones like a photograph that had been double-exposed. </p><p>The guy rooted through the magazines, flipping pages, chuckling to himself; stuffed them back into the rack with pages crumpled and spines broken. Elliott tried to look away, but the guy caught him watching, scooped a handful of Mars bars out of a display bin and stalked to the counter. </p><p>Elliott’s hands shook as he rang them up. He could feel the guy watching him: hazy, hollow grey eyes burning into the side of his head. The human face underneath was ordinary, slightly vacant. Elliott took the guy’s cash, and the guy unwrapped one of the bars, took a huge, heavy bite, his gaze locked on Elliott’s face while the skin over Elliott’s neck and down his spine matched like ants; sweat beading along his hairline and under his arms. After a minute, the guy cocked his head, smiled with both his mouths - one shadow-dark, the other smeared with chocolate.<br/></p>
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<a name="section0023"><h2>23. Black Magic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You hold your breath. The candle set so carefully on the floor flickers, a long line of pale wax traces its way to the floorboards, catches, puddles.  The air smells like sulfur, the smoking heads of the matches tossed into the tiny dish of water, floating listlessly, like dead bodies at sea. The room is quiet, but not silent. The radiator clicks, hisses with circulating heat. A dog barks outside. The candle’s wick pops when the flame strikes some imperfection. You can hear your own heartbeat, heavy with anticipation; but the adrenaline is gone now. You look at the summoning circle, sketched so carefully in chalk, and choke a little on the shame.</p><p>This doesn’t work. It <i>never</i> worked.</p><p>You drag your palm across the floor, obliterating the long white lines, the slow curls of archaic symbols, and feel the sharp stab of a splitter, cutting across your skin. You pull your hand back, leaving a smear of red behind, mingled with the chalk, press your thumb to the wound…</p><p>And the candle goes out.</p>
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<a name="section0024"><h2>24. Apocalypse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Cars lay across the roadway, three deep, a slow curl of smoke rising from the wreckage. Zeyad boosted himself over a twisted tire, hands slipping on the snow-slicked metal as he squeezed his way into the narrow gap between a twisted bumper and a windshield gone to spider webs. It cracked and groaned under the pressure of his shoulder, and he had to go down to his belly to make room for his backpack, which still snagged a torn muffler dangling from above, making the whole precious structure suspended just a few inches above his head creak and groan ominously. </p><p>The far side of the windshield, and the upholstery of the car interior behind it, was slicked with blood, the faint smell of rot rising into the cool air. A dead man writhed in the driver’s seat, trapped behind the bent steering wheel, head half-collapsed in on itself and coated in gore, gnashing his broken teeth. A heavy hand studded with broken fingers slapped uselessly against the dash as Zeyad pulled dragged himself, headfirst from the gap and tumbled onto damp pavement. </p><p>He scrambled to his feet, and continued on without looking back. Bodies lay scattered on the sidewalks, slumped in the road. As he weaved around them, some stirred - fingers curling, heads lifting, lungs exhaling fetid breath that didn’t leave clouds in the cold air. The whole city seemed to exhale with them, a long, collective moan of agony.</p>
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<a name="section0025"><h2>25. Transformation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for body horror - for those sensitive to that sort of thing.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Hands up - I said hands up!”</p><p>Flashlight beams dance hectically across the concrete. Laser sights flit like anxious flies. The tight room is heavy with the sounds of frantic breathing, of metal on metal. The air reeks of shit and adrenaline. </p><p>“Hands up!”</p><p>The thing that lurches into the light has a human face, but the body is bulbous, straining the fabric of dirt-stained jeans and a frayed hoodie, swelling like bread dough rising. The sounds from its throat are screams, snarls, phlegm-thickened gurgles, as cotton splits like tissue paper and the flesh underneath bubbles from the openings, bursts, spilling green ichor and a seething mass of limbs: hands, claws, tentacles - like a rorschach test made  of meat. Gunfire erupts, filling the air with the eye-burning reek of cordite and blood as the creature spreads, swelling, coating the walls, slapping, clawing and sticking against wet concrete, lashing out at its attackers with arms like whips that cut through combat vests like a knife through silk. It snares one of the soldiers by the ankle, drags him forward as some great mouth opens in its seething body, and pulls him greedily into a nest of teeth.</p>
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<a name="section0026"><h2>26. Eternity</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It is unbearable, sometimes, when the house is empty. The halls echo, hollowly, the floors groan and the walls sigh. The windows, naked, let in too much light - or they get filthy and let in too little; and the wind whistles through every crack - playing call-and-response with itself in a desperate act of loneliness.</p><p>But, it can be just as unbearable at the times when the house is full - with there is laughter in the halls and footsteps on the stairs, when a radio plays cheerful, lilting music in the sun-warmed den, and plush rugs in elaborate patterns and bright colours soften the floor in all the places where heavy feet might fall. It’s too much - all that life, a thing completely recognizable, and completely out of reach.  </p><p>Peace is like the fuse on a stick of dynamite, an anger that builds to an explosion - slammed doors and knocking against the windows; dishes that tumble from cupboards and mirrors that crack along their length. It is the writing on the walls: <i>my house this is MY HOUSE MY HOUSE</i>, and the light bulbs that burst in their sockets.</p><p>And then the house is quiet again, for a while; until the lonely whistling starts again.</p>
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<a name="section0027"><h2>27. Infection</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You realize he’s going to become one - right?  He’s going to become one of those fucking things!”</p><p>“Shut up,” Natalie said, firmly, sliding her body up in between Peter, and Joey forcing Peter back. “You don’t know that.”</p><p>Peter laughed, wildly.  Blood ran down the side of his face from a long gash across his temple, slicking the side of his neck, soaking the collar of his shirt.  “That’s how it fucking happens, Nat!”</p><p>“You don’t know that!”</p><p>At the pitch of her voice, something slammed, thunderously, against the floor above their heads, followed by a long, animalistic moan. Dust rained down into Natalie’s hair, then on her face as she and Peter both turned their faces towards the sound. </p><p>Slumped against the concrete wall, Joey moaned in the same, desperate tone, clutching the dark, bloody teeth marks perfectly set into the flesh of his arm.</p>
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<a name="section0028"><h2>28. Repetition</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The bus went over a hard bump, jolting Rebecca awake. Across the aisle, the old woman who had gotten on two stops after her was knitting a scarf - quick, precise movements of twin needles, unfazed by the instability of the road. The driver’s radio was playing a news report, something about a lost satellite, last seen in a decaying orbit. They passed a 7-11, with two police cars in the parking lot, emergency lights silent, but strobing, painting the wet asphalt with reams of colour as the police officers wandered around the parking lot, seemingly aimless. Rebecca’s eyes drifted closed. </p>
<p>The bus went over a hard bump. Rebecca’s forehead knocked against the cold window. The old woman across the aisle clucked her tongue, but didn’t drop a stitch. The driver’s radio was still talking about the satellite, falling to earth. Drops of rain spattered the windows. They passed a 7-11 with three police cars in the parking lot, siren lights flashing, doors open and abandoned. </p>
<p>The bus went over a bump so hard that Rebecca was thrown into the air. She gripped the seat in front of her, gasping. Across the aisle, the old woman had a scarf running all the way down to her ankles, almost touching the floor.</p>
<p>“What the hell is going on?” Rebecca asked her, but the woman didn’t look away from her work. Her needles were going so fast in her gnarled hands, they were almost a blur.  Rebecca fumbled with her seatbelt, pulled herself to her feet and staggered into the aisle.  After a few steps, she was no closer to the front of the bus. “Excuse me!” She shouted, but her voice was barely audible over the radio broadcast - which was louder now, the broadcasters’ speaking more quickly, tones sharp with alarm. They passed a 7-11 with a police car overturned in the parking lot, the undercarriage on fire, oily smoke billowing towards the dark sky, where something unbearably bright streaked across the horizon.</p>
<p>The bus went over...</p>
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<a name="section0029"><h2>29. Trapped</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Long slits of yellow light slipped through the cracks between the floorboards. Will watched the man upstairs move back and forth, soft footsteps lost to the music playing - the beat bright and cheerful, but the words indistinct. Sometimes the man would pause, right above Will’s head, like he was thinking, like he knew that Will was watching him. </p><p>Will waited until the man moved to the farthest side of the room, closest to where he thought the music was coming from, before he twisted against the chains and slipped them from his bloodied wrists. </p><p>The basement stank, like old dirt, like something rotting and something growing at the same time. The walls were cold and slippery under Will’s aching hands are he traced along them in the dark, finding his way - delicately - to the other side of the room, until his bare foot bumped against something soft, but firm, and his fingers knocked against a warm jaw, tangled in greasy hair. </p><p>The other boy groaned softly, and twisted away. </p><p>“Shh,” Will hissed, pawing the darkness to find the boy’s cold hands. “C’mon, we’re getting out of here.”</p>
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<a name="section0030"><h2>30. Underground</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Has he been out there all day?”</p><p>Robin followed her mother’s gaze out the window to the field behind the house, where she should just see her little brother’s shoulders above the tops of the wild prairie grass at the edge of the creek. </p><p>“Yeah - why not? I thought you’d be happy he was playing outside.” And he hadn’t been underfoot while Robin was getting her room unpacked, which was a bonus. He’d even taken the lunch she made him out there. Better than being cooped up inside all day, like he’d been in the apartment. </p><p>Her mother sighed, heavily, a consummate sound of despair and disappointment. Robin was so used to hearing it that it barely registered. “He’s probably sunburned, Robin! And it’s dangerous out there. That water - he could drown.”</p><p>“He’s eight. He knows how to swim. And the water is like...half an inch deep. It’s not even water, it’s just mud.”</p><p>A bag of groceries thudded emphatically on the countertop. An apple broke free, rolled across the fake marble and bruised as it struck the floor. “Could you not argue with me just <i>once</i>? Go bring him inside, please.”</p><p>“Whatever,” Robin snarled, stuffing her feet into her sandals, left abandoned by the back door, and storming out into the late afternoon sun. The heat struck her immediately, a fine layer of sweat breaking out across her bare shoulders and the back of her neck. Grasshoppers scattered in front of her as she stomped through the grass, joining the rising heat haze that distorted the distant shapes of the houses in the next subdivision over. One day, they’d probably bump right up against the creek, like their new house and its unsold neighbours already did. </p><p>Henry was crouched in the dirt at the edge of the creek, near a dry storm drain. The plate containing his lunch lay forgotten near the drain, crawling with ants and a pair of hungry wasps.  He’d been collecting rocks again - dozens of them piled in little towers, or laid out in spirals and lines in the dirt, matched with lines he’d carved with a stick, like some kind of arcane map. The air near the drain felt a little cooler, thanks to the nearby water - but it smelled bad - stagnant and sour.</p><p>“Jeez, you’ve been busy,” Robin muttered, stepping carefully around the paths of rocks, he reached for the plate, only to hesitate at the sight of a wasp, crawling on a bitten piece of bread. “Couldn’t you bring your dishes inside before the bugs took over?”</p><p>“No,” Henry said, plainly - too busy etching something into the dirt to even look over. “I wanted to share it with my friend.”</p><p>“What friend?”</p><p>Her brother glanced up, and pointed wordlessly into the darkness of the cool darkness of the storm drain.</p>
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<a name="section0031"><h2>31. Isolation</h2></a>
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    <p>The tree house is empty.</p><p>It’s strange, what a hollow feeling that opens in Ed’s stomach. He was just getting used to knowing his buddy was there - even so far away, across the parking lot, the road, at least two layers of fencing - the first human shape Ed had seen in...god, he doesn’t remember now. Has it been a year? Two?</p><p>Shit. </p><p>Ed lies outside on the roof for a while, watching the tree house through his binoculars, with the spring sunlight on the back of his neck, lazy flies buzzing back and forth. He should be working on any number of other things. Checking for holes on the fence, weeding the garden; but instead he squints through the binoculars, looking for a sign - any sign - his buddy is still out there. </p><p>And then, around noon, Ed sees something weaving through the abandoned cars in the overgrown parking lot. At first, it’s just a flicker of motion - a reflection in a grimy windshield - then Ed spots the familiar bright yellow of a SpongeBob T-shirt and Buddy shambles into the open, staggering on broken concrete. </p><p>Jeez, he looks bad. He must have finally fallen out of the tree house, attracted by some animal or simply by brain-dead misfortune. The flesh has been peeled clean off the left side of his face, exposing the bare bone underneath, and his eye is missing. Blood slicks his mousy-brown curls, gelatinous chunks stick to the front of his shirt. His left arm is snapped clean, hanging by loose flesh, it wobbles lifelessly with the unsteady sway of his walk.</p><p>Eventually, he bumps up against the chain link fence, gets knocked back onto his butt, and sits there, staring blankly. </p><p>Ed gets his gun, and goes down to the parking lot.</p>
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